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Cape weather, 22 Feb

Today: 17-23 °C, 60% rain.

Thu		17-24 °C
	Sunny
Fri		17-26 °C
	Sunny
Sat		17-27 °C
	Sunny
Sun		18-26 °C
	Sunny
Mon		18-28 °C
	Sunny
Tue		17-24 °C, 20% rain
	Partly cloudy
Wed		16-22 °C
	Sunny
Thu		16-26 °C
	Sunny
Fri		17-27 °C
	Sunny

Jun
13 Laser is produced by a living cell. The technique starts by engineering a cell that can produce a light-emitting protein that was first obtained from glowing jellyfish. »

May
29 Cleaning Up Radioactive Mess with Blue Goo. A clever technology is helping crews in Japan contain and clean up the contamination caused by the ongoing nuclear disaster there: a blue liquid that hardens into a gel that peels off of surfaces, taking microscopic particles like radiation and other contaminants with it. »

May
27 The Art of the Animated GIF. Animated GIFs are like the jazz of the internet: they could only exist, and be created and appreciated, online. Photographer Jamie Beck and motion graphics artist Kevin Burg may have finally found a way to elevate the animated GIF to a level approaching fine art, with their "cinemagraphs" - elegant, subtly animated creations that are "something more than a photo but less than a video." »

May
27 Proof That Einstein Got It Right. Einstein's general theory of relativity predicts that massive, spinning objects like Earth should warp space and time around them, as well as drag space and time along as they rotate - as a dipper twirling in a honeypot would spin honey. Francis Everitt talks about how NASA's Gravity Probe-B experiment has just confirmed both predictions. »

May
27 USB-stick PC could sell for £15. A miniaturised computer could sell for as little as £15 when it is launched next year by veteran computer games developer David Braben. The device, produced by a new group called Raspberry Pi, is approximately the size of a USB memory stick. »

Apr
30 Ultrafast fibre optics set new speed record. Two separate research groups have just set a world record by sending more than 100 terabits of information per second through a single optical fibre. That's enough to deliver three solid months of HD video- or the contents of 250 double-sided Blu-ray discs. »

Apr
23 Dutch To Build Solar Panels Into Their Roads. The Dutch are well known for their ubiquitous bike lanes, to the point where Amsterdam is neck and neck with Copenhagen for the title of most bike-loving capital in Europe. Now, Denmark will have to come up with something big to match the latest plan from the Netherlands - the installation of solar panels in roads, starting with bike lanes. »

Apr
23 Rumor that "God Particle" Has Been Detected. A rumor is floating around the physics community that the world's largest atom smasher may have detected a long-sought subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, also known as the "God particle." »

Apr
23 Lasers May Replace Spark Plugs. The spark plug's days are numbered though thanks to a new breakthrough from some scientists that have found a way to replace the spark with a laser inside the internal combustion engine. According to researchers, the move to lasers from spark plugs will allow cleaner and more efficient vehicles and with the looming increases in mandated fuel economy, the auto industry will need all the help it can get. »

DAC quest

Mission as yet incomplete!

So ... you have a computer with music on it. Lots of it. It no longer makes sense to even bother with a CD player, because your whole collection can be put into a massive playlist. So far so good, until you plug it into the Hi-Fi. Suddenly the actual sampling abilities of your sound card hits you squarely in the face.

Here's the theory. You turf/disable the offending card, and invest in a USB sound device like the Xitel Pro HiFi-Link. Note the spiffy length of cable they give you - the real reason for the purchase, as you will see in a bit. The theory goes on that even if you have a high end card like the super cool E-MU 1212M, you are far from an ideal situation. The PC itself is about the most signal unfriendly environment you can come across, and then unless you want to buy something very expensive you are faced with a constant fan drone that eventually becomes like Chinese water torture. NOT the thing for listening to music.

Now you have the USB adapter, things are looking up, but let's face it the DAC of the USB device is also no more than passable. And, unless your lounge looks like a movie theater it's not the place where you want to put a digital receiver just for playing music off your computer (never mind the overkill). Hmmm ... what you need is a DAC. Just a straight old DAC. Except these things are the playground of high-income geeks: people that feel their CD player's output is still not good enough to give them true listening pleasure. But, let's face it, if the music's from your PC it will never quite be CD quality. What you really need is some sort of "good enough" DAC that doesn't turn the whole excercise into a white elephant.

The answer: DIY. There are some pretty high end components to be found in DIY kits, and the only remaining challenge is to find the ideal price/performance point. A big disclaimer is that I am only looking at kits that can be built/bought by an amateur (like me). Here are the "suspects" thus far; kits as well as built units.